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When it comes to inspiring engagement, there are four criteria essential to creating and maintaining meaningful connections with potential supporters, donors, members, and visitors.

During a recent meeting with executive leaders (the “Chiefs” – or, affectionately – the “Cs”) of a mission-driven visitor-serving institution with which I am involved, I was asked, “What makes us [our institution] seen as a credible actor by the market?”

It’s an excellent question – and information from several KYOB posts came flooding to me all at once. Fortunately, there’s sufficient analysis about what informs positive brand perceptions and relationships to pull out four, key factors that contribute to sustained, meaningful engagement in the digital age. Combine these factors with the more tactical four Ts of digital engagement, and you’ve got a good basis for a successful organization’s public-perception strategy.

Considering how your organization approaches its audiences within these four realms is likely critical for the successful achievement of your mission and financial goals alike:

1) Relevance

Being relevant isn’t just about being active on Facebook and (although that can help). Being relevant means connecting with audiences though mission-based content. In today’s world, content is no longer king. Connectivity is king. Connectivity happens when an organization presents a passion or platform that resonates with a potential constituent. Therefore, connectivity is about your organization and its relationship with other people, while content is only about your organization. Connectivity is necessarily relevant, while content risks operating in isolation if it fails to engage its hopeful audiences. Connectivity – or sharing an implicitly understood “So what?” with a potential supporter – is prerequisite to action. Simply put: Without connectivity, nobody cares about your organization. Don’t just aim to be “important,” aim to be relevant.

3) Reputation

Certainly, all of these points may play a role in providing the foundation for an organization’s overall reputation. However, “reputation” – or, what other people say about you (in marketing parlance think, “third-party endorsements”) – plays a particularly important role in driving success. In fact, data suggest that an organization’s “reputation” is a primary motivator for engaging high-propensity visitors (i.e. those who demonstrate the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics that indicate a heightened likelihood to visit a museum, symphony, historic site, or other visitor-serving organization). So, what comprises an organization’s reputation? Good question. Regular KYOB readers know that I talk about this…a lot. The answer is a little bit of paid media (e.g. promotions and advertising) and a lot bit of reviews from trusted sources (particularly word of mouth and earned media – both of which are often facilitated by social media). In fact, reviews from trusted resources are 12.85 times more influential in terms of your organization’s reputation than is the advertising and promotions that likely make up the lion’s share of your media budget. If you’re really good, other people will talk about you…and the things that other people say about you (i.e. reviews from trusted sources) play a bigger role in enhancing reputation than does anything that an organization pays to say about itself. In order to achieve favorable reviews, an organization will benefit by first aiming to be relevant and resonant.

4) Responsiveness

“Social care” is a term for carrying out relationship building and customer service practices on communication platforms (digital and otherwise). Social care is expected by audiences in today’s world. Social media isn’t a one-way communication channel like a television ad or print ad or direct mail brochure – which data suggest are decreasing in overall marketing value when compared to the web and social media. In order to successfully execute engagement strategies, organizations must be “real-time” responsive to their online audiences. While social care and nurturing audience relationships composes one of the three key elements of social media success, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. The “responsiveness” goal is to be an active listener and display transparency in order to elevate levels of trust in the organization. Being responsive demonstrates that the organization cares about its community of fans and supporters. Most importantly, it demonstrates trust in audiences – and that trust has the potential to be returned to the organization.

Think about how you engage with your favorite nonprofit organizations. You may find that these four Rs of brand credibility play an important role in your own perceptions of organizations. It’s funny that so few nonprofits take a moment to step back and consider how they want to be viewed by their target audiences and supporters, isn’t it? How an organization is perceived in this digital world of heightened noise – wherein every type of organization seems to have a social mission – is neither the cause of success nor the outcome of an organization’s success. It’s both.

The four Rs of brand credibility move in a cycle. It’s important that organizations realize that they play an important role in making their own cycle ascend upward instead of spiraling downward. It’s time to step in and maximize our opportunity for success – and that means understanding the important role that we play in driving it

Like this post? Here are a few related posts from Know Your Own Bone that you might also enjoy:

An organization’s nonprofit status may carry neither the perceptual weight nor the relevance that many leadership teams imagine…and nonprofits may be sabotaging their own opportunities for support because of it.

All organizations – not just nonprofits – are now in the business of promoting “social good” in order to gain support. The recent Super Bowl was an excellent example. From McDonald’s “Pay With Love” commercial, to Dove’s #LikeAGirl campaign, to all of the emotional daddy-love commercials tugging at our heartstrings, the world’s biggest advertising stage was full of attempts to demonstrate meaningful brand values. The integration of social values within business operations and communications – “corporate social responsibility” – is one of today’s most prominent business trends. And, this trend has a profound impact on nonprofit organizations because, today, the market demands transparency and authenticity to encourage support (e.g. donation, ticket purchase, etc.). The market increasingly expects organizations to articulate and demonstrate a “why” (or “so what?”) beyond “to make money.” In fact, many studies demonstate that social responsibility is no longer optional for businesses.

In other words, if your organization imagines one of its key differentiators to be its social responsibility, well, then your thinking may be at complete odds with the way the market perceives and evaluates all organizations (i.e. nonprofits and for-profits alike).

Consider this: A nonprofit organization’s “competition” for funds and market share isn’t limited to a similar organization down the street. It’s increasingly a myriad of entities within the for-profit sector. And, generally, these entities have a leg-up in allocating financial resources to help communicate and support their social missions.

Here are some considerations for organizations to remain relevant and meaningful in our age of social good for business’s sake:

1) Consider that people may not even know that you are nonprofit

“Wait. What?!” For many individuals working within nonprofits, this can be a big shock. However, time and time again in my work at IMPACTS, the data indicate that the majority of the same public that organizations endeavor to serve do not know that many nonprofits are actually nonprofits.

A majority of people – including visitors! – are unaware that these organizations are nonprofits. As the data indicates, the market’s lack of regard for an organization’s tax status extends to all types of visitor-serving organizations – so no one is immune to this condition. The question is: Does it matter? Well, if you consider your organization’s tax-exemption as a primary differentiator in a crowded, competitive market, then this data may be very alarming. However, if you tend to accept that the market is infinitely more interested in what you actually do as an organization than it is in the esoterica and vagaries of the US tax code, then this finding isn’t nearly so troubling.

We all know how challenging it can be to make a lasting impression. In the few precious moments when we hope to engage with our audiences, is the foremost thing that we hope to communicate about our tax status? And, if so, does the market even care? Which leads me to…

2) Audiences are increasingly sector-agnostic

The fact that people are confused about the nonprofit status of many organizations likely doesn’t matter.

Data suggest that 91% of global consumers will chose to associate with and support brands and organizations that provide some sort of social benefit over a product that does not. For nearly all brands right now, it’s cool to be kind.

While many of these types of initiatives include a nonprofit beneficiary, the fact remains (and, indeed, becomes glaringly obvious): People don’t need to donate directly to a nonprofit to support something that they believe in. They can simply buy fast-food fried chicken.

And, with that, BAM! We’ve attached the idea of “giving” to a traditional economic utility curve. This model is arguably more sustainable because the consumer actually gets something (a product or experience) in addition to the feel-good attached to supporting a cause. Whether nonprofits like it or not, this model changes the way people think about supporting causes.

It’s great that some nonprofits are benefiting from these campaigns. They are an opportunity for securing support from a for-profit company and can be very successful partnerships! However, many organizations neglect to consider what all of this may be doing to the general market’s attitude toward nonprofits. I’m absolutely not saying that these partnerships are a bad idea. I’m saying that to move forward, it may be best to recognize (and accept) this evolution we’ve helped to create in the market’s perception and their related progression toward a more sector-agnostic world.

3) Having a mission is money

It’s time that nonprofits remove the emotion that may be elicited by the use of the word “mission” so close to the word “money” and tackle this one head-on. I’m talking mostly to organizations that do provide a service, product, or experience and indeed operate – at least a little bit – based upon the concept of a more traditional utility curve (i.e. visitor-serving organizations).

Yes, nonprofits are arguably and increasingly competing with for-profits – but not on how well these entities can be for-profit-y. For-profits are competing with nonprofits regarding how conceptually nonprofit-y they can be!

Transparent, social-good acting, for-the-best advocating, morally-sound, socially-valuable…the same perceptions that may have been traditionally associated with successful nonprofits are among the biggest wants of for-profits in today’s world. If your marketing team is all about discounts and sweepstakes and only posting about how people should “visit us!” tell them to knock it off. That’s not good business, and it’s not the sweet spot in which these organizations need to shine.

4) Demonstrating impact and prioritizing transparency are more important for nonprofits than ever before

Donors increasingly make decisions based more on the values that an organization shows by way of their actions and real-time communications on social media then what an organization tells in ads and individual status updates. The web empowers potential supporters to make their own decisions about organizations based on their overall perception of the brand. Organizations that don’t walk their talk generally suffer. Extreme cases are those of McDonalds and SeaWorld.

Right now, nonprofits risk being perceived as second-rate at achieving the very positive attributes that define them (i.e. being about more than making a buck).

Nonprofits are masters of tugging at heartstrings and making the world a better place. Now – more than ever before – it’s up to all nonprofit organizations to do more than tell. It’s time to show how well we do what we do best. Our increasingly sector-agnostic world has changed the game.Organizations need to decide if they still want to be a valuable player and, if so, update best practices accordingly.

Want to keep moving your mission moving forward and your doors open? It’s time to end the debate on these pricing-related topics.

As the visitor-serving industry (museums, theaters, symphonies, historic sites, etc.) broadly struggles with declining attendance trends and a potentially unsustainable reliance on kindness and not commerce, “getting your price right” is more important than ever to nonprofits who depend on the gate to support their missions. Too high of a price may serve as a barrier to visitation. Too low of a price risks leaving money on the table and all of the attendant fiscal challenges associated with failing to maximize earned revenues.

Let’s end the debate on these three pricing-related topics and get on with the business of running effective businesses that enable meaningful missions:

1) Pricing is NOT an art (Pricing is now a science)

Determining the optimal price of admission is no longer a trial and error process. In fact, it’s anything but a “guess” (however well-educated). Data is playing an increasingly important role in the way that institutions operate for good reason.

A near-decade of research including hundreds of interviews with US visitor-serving nonprofit organizations strongly suggests that many pricing models are the product of “unintentional collusion” (AKA “the blind leading the blind”). This deeply-flawed model fails to contemplate two critical factors when it comes to informing a pricing strategy: (i) the fact that a proximate (or competitive, or peer) organization has established a price does not necessarily mean that it is an optimal price; and (ii) the market tends to view organizations – however “alike” they may be – in very unique terms, and this uniqueness frequently extends to pricing.

Unintentional collusion looks something like this:

Thanks to readily available data and analyses, there is no reason to base pricing on anything beyond an organization’s own, unique equities. For every organization, there is a data-based “sweet spot” in which admission prices are optimal.

Let’s consider a quick example of what an optimal pricing strategy looks like when charted (Note: This particular example is from a performance-based entity, but this way of considering pricing applies to any type of admission):

In the above example, the data-informed analysis suggests that pricing less than $75 for a ticket to the performance (more specifically, to a “premium” seat at a non-matinee, live performance) would be “value advantaged” – a polite euphemism for leaving money on the table! However, anything above $75 pushes the price into the “value disadvantaged” realm – a place where the price poses a needless barrier to entry (and, generally, one where the increased per capita revenues will not offset the decline in attendance). For every category of admission, every organization has an optimal price – one that is neither value advantaged nor value disadvantaged.

Organizations guess their price (without leveraging data to inform their pricing strategy) at their own risk. Getting the price wrong can alienate potential visitors and supporters if it’s too high, and make it difficult to raise prices to an optimal value over time if price starts too low.

Looking for ways to help support a price increase? Well, data suggest that a whiz-bang new exhibit or facility expansion isn’t necessarily coupled to an increased price tolerance. Instead, efforts to improving an organization’s reputation or the overall satisfaction of visitors are much more reliable indicators of increased value for cost perceptions.

A thought that sometimes emerges once an organization’s optimal pricing has been quantified is strangely, “but that’s too expensive to provide affordable access!” Admission is not a substitute for affordable access. Admission and affordable access programs are completely different things…and an organization needs to establish its optimal pricing strategy in order to support effective affordable access programming.

In other words, if you subsidize price in the name of affordable access (i.e. artificially lowering the price to create a value advantaged pricing condition), you are limiting your organization’s ability to fund quality programs that DO provide true affordable access. Making your entire pricing strategy an “affordable access program” leaves money on the table as folks pay an admission price below what they (the market!) indicate they were willing to pay for your experience.

When it comes to the truest definition of affordable access, an admission price point of $15 or $20 or $25 is functionally irrelevant to many of our most under-served audiences…most any price at all may pose an insurmountable barrier to visitation.

What if you aim to provide affordable access for the community? Won’t a high admission price deter folks? The data suggest “no” – at least not the people who were able to pay in the first place – but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to develop true access programming to better engage constituents for whom price is barrier while also considering strategic promotions that celebrate your community. Speaking of which…

Promotions celebrate community while discounts devalue your brand. These are very real and very different things. The biggest differentiating factor is the question “So what?” If the point of providing a discount is simply admitting folks for a lower price, then the discount is a bad idea that devalues your brand. (And, as a reminder, data suggests that all discounts provided through social media are bad business for nonprofit organizations.) However, if an organization’s answer to “so what?” is “to celebrate a community” and that purpose is made clear in external communications, then the program that you are describing is a promotion. The feature of a promotion may include a special pricing opportunity – think special pricing for mothers on Mother’s Day, or differentiated pricing for local residents.

Discounts make people say, “I got in cheap.” Promotions make people say, “I feel valued.” Discounts are not only meaningless, but data suggest that they also lead to less satisfying overall experiences and even increase the time before a return visit! While this may be surprising to some folks, it’s classic pricing psychology in action.

If visitor-serving organizations aim to keep providing inspiration and education to the masses, then the first imperative is to exist – and it’s hard to exist (let alone thrive) in the long-term without a sustainable revenue strategy that optimizes pricing.

Pricing strategies – and even pricing psychologies – are not mysterious so let’s stop guessing. The data is not uncertain.

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A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. – Jeff Bezos

The reputation of an organization drives its impact and solvency. Or, is it those things that create a good reputation?Reputation is neither the cause of success, nor the outcome. It is both. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue, and that may be why some organizations tend to focus on only one side of the equation.

Organizations can – and should – keep tabs on and aim to influence their reputations in order to experience greater success in terms of both solvency and mission-impact. If your organization is like most, you don’t have a single position devoted to managing reputation…and likely think that this responsibility should rest somewhere fuzzy within the marketing department. Today, with an ever-increasing emphasis on transparency and potential supporters wanting to make their own assessments on the worthiness of organizations, an organization’s reputation plays a more important role than ever before.

Managing reputation isn’t an issue of structure, skillset, or tasking – it is an outcome of a successful workplace culture. Here are five reasons why your organization will benefit by integrating discussions concerning reputation management into its culture:

1. A good reputation shows why your organization exists (and naturally attracts people who share a passion for your mission)

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it…The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” –Simon Sinek

If your organization is doing its job correctly, then the reason why staff members come to work every morning should be apparent. Your mission messaging should trump marketing as an attraction if you are a visitor-serving organization. In essence, your reputation is a reflection of your organization’s character and culture – and organizations will benefit by making sure that their reputation is strong, consistent, and, thus, without need of “hard selling.”

“If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me.”- Dwight L. Moody.

A good reputation means greater odds for the long-term financial sustainability of your organization (provided that you remain true to your values and address “crisis” with expediency, sincerity, and transparency).

What makes up an organization’s reputation? Good question. Regular KYOB readers know that I talk about this…a lot. The answer is a little bit paid media (e.g. advertising) and a lot bit of reviews from trusted sources (particularly word of mouth and earned media – both of which are often facilitated by social media). In fact, reviews from trusted resources are 12.85 times more influential in terms of your organization’s reputation than is the advertising that comes out of a media budget.

Because real-time, online platforms play such a critical role in both cultivating and maintaining reputation, it is nearly impossible to intelligently discuss reputation without also contemplating (online and offline) engagement strategies. It means that organizations will need to talk about social media as it relates to organizational goals and the behavior of breathing human beings instead of reducing the conversation to “likes” and technological skillsets…and that’s a good, necessary thing.

In order to understand the strength of an organization’s reputation, that organization actually needs to listen to people outside of the organization. No, a person inside of the organization cannot determine current reputation. Create an image and build a culture to create a desired reputation? Sure. But nobody in the organization can talk about the organization’s reputation without first listening to feedback from your audiences. Only your market can lend insight into current perceptions of your organization.

Most organizations do not have a Chief Reputation Officer (aside from, perhaps, an overworked CEO), but there is budding conversation about why some organizations may want to consider it.

Reputation management is fundamentally different than a role that might be found within a marketing and communications department. It involves strategically managing and monitoring relationships with distinct constituent groups – including groups related to development, visitor services, community outreach, and government relations functions.

Even if an organization does appoint a committee or a position related to reputation management, we live in a time when not having the whole organization on board with your vision (or your “why” – see point #1) can lead to a fragmented reputation. Today, Benjamin Franklin’s words have never been truer: “It takes many good deeds to build a reputation and only one bad one to lose it.”

In sum, an organization’s reputation is one of its most valuable assets, and, as such, it’s time we start actively talking about it within every department.

We would all like a reputation for generosity and we’d all like to buy it cheap.

What a year! From the strategic evolution of nonprofit organizations to marketing channel efficacy to the need for millennial board members… These are your (a rather focused tribe of industry leaders) favorite KYOB posts of 2014.

Here are KYOB’s most viewed and passed-along posts of 2014. These are the posts that my analytics suggest you emailed around the most, shared with your friends and colleagues, and got the most attention within graduate programs and professional development curriculums:

As the US population grows, the number of people attending visitor-serving organizations is in general decline. And this is a very big problem for sustainability without a digital-age shift in our business model. Here are three behaviors we need to adapt to reset our current condition.

If any of these outdated beliefs still linger within your organization, then your nonprofit may be suffering both in terms of finances and mission delivery. It’s time to retire these obsolete practices once and for all.

Don’t have at least one millennial on your Board of Directors yet? Here are six, critical reasons to call up the nominating committee and work on getting some impressive millennials aboard your nonprofit Board right now.

Social media is an enormously important component of your overall marketing and communication strategy. In fact, data support it as one of the most efficient and effective channels to engage your users and constituents.

Many resources focusing on “the future” are actually communicating about emerging trends that are happening right now…and when we call them “the future” we do our organizations a grave disservice. Here’s why.

While recognizing the progress that has been made, here are three conflicting perceptions that visitor-serving organizations must internally resolve in order to remain relevant in our ever-evolving era

Cheers to an incredible 2015 for all of your mission-driven organizations! May this next year bring you and your organizations much success.

Want to be a relevant, digitally engaging, and future-facing organization? You may be starting out on the wrong track. While it seems like a no-brainer, the first step is to actually understand what those words mean…because it seems that many executive leaders and staff members may not.

Before you skim ahead and chalk up these issues to “semantics,” consider that when a term is used incorrectly by leadership within an institution, other members of the organization begin to use it in the same way. When these important – and, definitionally, misunderstood – terms become “cheat” words for industry evolution, problems emerge. At the very least, the organization (if not the industry) is destined to be laggard until we either get the meanings right or someone creates a NEW word to represent the thing that the original word should have meant in the first place. These matters of “semantics” are misguiding our industry.

Misusing (or perhaps unintentionally “redefining”) important concepts for strategic evolution happens constantly. I see it in my work every day – not to mention in public communications from nonprofit CEOs. Perhaps it’s because I’m a digital native myself, or because I work primarily with Baby Boomers to whom these words may seem relatively new in a contemporary context, or because I’m constantly in the thick of conversations regarding strategic change with my clients…but I find myself consistently feeling like Inigo Montoya (without the cool ‘stache) when words like “relevant,” “digital,” “engagement,” and the “future” come up. Interestingly, it seems that the meanings of these four important words have been jumbled together.

Let’s dive into these examples. Here are those four words that nonprofits often “cheat” themselves out of by (knowingly or unknowingly) redefining their meanings. In no particular order, ladies and gentleman…

1) Relevant (vs. current)

It seems that when someone asks, “How can we make our organization more relevant?” the proposed solutions involve tactics that are current (e.g. utilizing social media, providing analysis of a current event on a blog, or adding a widget to a website). But what if the question was phrased, “How can we make our organization more meaningful to our constituents?” (That, folks, is the true opportunity embedded within the word “relevant.”) When we use or interpret “relevant” to mean “current,” we miss the boat on more important conversations with greater potential to elevate individual organizations and the industry at large.

Being relevant is about connectivity, not content. Connectivity is king. Being current can certainly go a long way in making your organization more relevant to individuals, but promulgating the use of “relevance” to instead imply “current” shortcuts important conversations about how to actually connect with constituents and inspire them to act in the interest of your organization’s mission.

2) Engagement (vs. social media interaction)

Without a doubt, fostering engagement is critical for securing support in the information age. The more folks feel a connection with your organization by whatever means, the more relevant (yes, the real meaning of the word) an organization may become. Like being “relevant,” “engagement” is about connectivity. It heightens an organization’s ability to foster feelings of affinity that motivate a desired behavior.

Engagement actually means “to become involved in.” Engagement does not mean, “create a moment of semi-detached, low-level maybe-interest on a trackable social media platform”…so let’s stop using it that way. We miss out on important discussions about impact and strategy (and confuse ourselves by further contributing to the social media data dilemma) when we reduce “engagement” to simply mean something like “Facebook likes.”

4) Future (vs. present)

Talking about the “future” of organizations may be holding them back. Many industry resources supposedly focusing on “the future” are actually communicating about emerging trends that are happening right now…and when we call them “the future” we do ourselves a grave disservice for several reasons. (For a full run-down, check out this article.) Among those is the fact that calling things that are happening in the present “the future” excuses putting off critical issues, implies uncertainty (even though the data is anything but uncertain), and this misuse of the word also fosters a false and undeserved sense of “innovation” when many organizations are not even keeping up with the day-to-day realities of the world that we live in.

These “matters of semantics” are playing big roles in the progress (or lack thereof) of nonprofits and visitor-serving organizations. My hope is that by identifying these “cheats” we may open our minds (and our mouths) to having bigger, more meaningful conversations about the future of our own organizations and nonprofits at large.

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As the US population grows, the number of people attending visitor-serving organizations is (still) in general decline. And this is a very big problem for sustainability without a digital-age shift in our business model. It’s not just museums. Many visitor-serving organizations – science centers, historical sites, aquariums, zoos, symphonies, etc. – are failing to keep pace with population growth.

Consider: In the five-year duration spanning 2009-2013, the US population increased by 3.5% from 305.5 million to 316.1 million. The majority of this growth occurred in major metropolitan areas – the very population dense regions where many visitor-serving organizations are located. Indeed, nearly one in seven Americans live in the metropolitan areas of the country’s three largest cities – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

However, during the same duration, data indicate that attendance at many nonprofit, visitor-serving organizations has declined. In fact, of the 224 visitor-serving organizations contemplated in the 2014 National Awareness, Attitudes & Usage Study of Visitor-Serving Organizations (NAAU), 186 organizations (83.0%) reported flat or declining attendance. And this is neither a regional nor curatorial content-specific finding – the study representatively contemplates visitor-serving organizations of every size, type, and area.

Many organizations are hesitant to acknowledge attendance challenges…especially when they have historically cited being the “most visited” as an indicator of their expertise and effectiveness. I sense that pressure from governing boards also plays a role – particularly as many organizations have been tasked to maximize earned revenues (often inevitably linked to visitation). Perhaps most concerning of all are attempts to blunt the challenge by proposing half-measures as remedy – you’ll no doubt recognize the “don’t worry, we’re going digital!” excuse and the related practice of sending mid-level staff to innovation conferences as attempted evidence of progress. (This last excuse may be especially worrisome as it seems that many staff members tasked to “innovate” may not actually be empowered to carryout their plans for advancement.)

But, regardless of the excuse, the numbers suggest that our industry risks becoming less relevant to future audiences. What does this mean to visitor-serving organizations? Let’s look at a few examples. (Note: To keep this from being a huge, overwhelming chart, I pulled out major metro markets and a few areas cited as “up and coming.”)

To illustrate, the population of the Atlanta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) has increased in the past five years by 9.4%. During the same duration, visitation to the Atlanta-area organizations contemplated in the NAAU study indicates an attendance decline of 4.6%. Think about that – if engagement were keeping pace with population growth, an organization with an annual attendance of 1,000,000 in year 2009 would reasonably expect to welcome 1,094,000 visitors in year 2013. Instead, on average, the studied organizations saw attendance decline from the theoretical 1,000,000 visitor level in year 2009 to 954,000 visitors in year 2013. Measured against the expectations of population growth, visitor engagement underperformed by 140,000 visitors!

The expectation would be for attendance to increase alongside population growth – otherwise, it is indicative of underperforming the opportunity. Again, the findings are stark and concerning for organizations in the engagement business:

In most any other business, if you saw the market steadily increasing in size and your product’s usage in steady retreat alongside it, you’d likely think, “This business model sucks.”

Well, our business model sucks.

Confronted with this evidence, I’ve heard leaders recycle tired strategies of securing larger donations from an aging donor base, and plans to gain more grant funding from governments and foundations. Generally, they aim to “pivot” from a reliance on earned revenues to (hopefully…fingers crossed!) additional contributed revenues. Except no. The visitor-serving industry doesn’t need to pivot. It needs to reset.

Here are three behaviors we need to adapt to reset our current condition:

1) Stop citing poor previous efforts as evidence that something will not work

Some visitor-serving organizations will declare that they “already tried” something after investing only the most minimal of resources necessary to claim effort. This is a surefire recipe for failure …yet, it happens all of the time. Here’s a quick example: Many organizations will offer options to buy tickets online and simply invest enough to create a webpage for it. Then when nobody uses that method to buy tickets they say, “Look! We tried that and nobody bought tickets that way!” Actually, nobody bought tickets that way because your site wasn’t mobile friendly, it takes 10 different screens to buy a ticket, it requires several pages of personal information, it’s confusing and time consuming, andit costs more. Often it’s an organization’s own fault when data-informed things don’t work, but organizations frequently take a half (or maybe a one-tenth) approach to something and basically (knowingly or unknowingly) set it up for certain failure. This is just one, basic example.

“Our crummy product failed, ergo everything related to this project won’t work” justifies stagnancy by masking it with false wisdom. Organizations think that they are cutting-edge for trying something without any conviction, and that the wisdom they received from their inevitable failure justifies closing the book on really big things like digital engagement. How does this even make sense? This type of excuse-making is a shortcut to irrelevance. Just stop doing it.

2) Stop defending past decisions

This seems to be a particularly hard one for many leaders to embrace. After all, it may be human nature to defend one’s past decisions as “right” and “good.” And, at the time when they were made, they probably were. But times change. Today, we are witnessing incredible changes – many borne of technological advancement – accelerating progress at a revolutionary pace. By what rightful reason do we think that we’re exempted from the prevailing changes affecting the rest of the world?

Just because you spent thousands and thousands of dollars on print material doesn’t spare you from the necessity of hiring an online community manager. On a more substantial investment scale, those millions of dollars that you invested in a new entrance to facilitate faster put-through times doesn’t exempt you from developing a mobile ticketing platform that may make ticket counters increasingly obsolete. This is a lesson to learn in real-time (as opposed to retrospectively): Repairing and updating past decisions is often more time-consuming and, ultimately, more expensive in the long run than starting anew. It’s OK – heck, even encouraged – to approach the current condition untethered to the past. That was then, this is now.

3) Embrace the inevitable path of progress

Max Anderson, CEO of the Dallas Museum of Art, gave a short ignite talk at the most recent Museum Computer Network conference. The topic of his talk was how to “persuade your museum director to help you” (i.e. how to get him/her to invest in “innovation”). From the beginning of the video it’s easy to see one of the biggest, most glaring problems in our industry: He begins his talk by asking how many museum directors are at the conference. Very short awkward silence ensues…followed by laughter. Really?! Are even our conferences about innovation and new ideas attended primarily by middle managers?!

The reason for the lack of executive decision-makers at many conferences is not necessarily the fault of museum CEOs (as the conferences aren’t always adequately geared toward Directors). But it’s not wholly the task of middle managers to communicate and justify the imperative to remain relevant to CEOs either. There’s a messed up barrier to betterment here, and it has more to do with a flawed structure than simple lexicon within an antiquated museum hierarchy. His talk is absolutely true, probably staggeringly helpful, and thus amazingly messed up at the same time.

We’ve developed this detrimental idea that “digital” has to do with “tech” (not people), and “innovation” isn’t necessary for survival. Max Anderson’s “primer on the psychology of museum directors” underscores that the status quo (and, of course, legacy!) is what museum directors are primarily interested in…but the status quo isn’t working to bring in more people by creating crowds OR buzz. Efforts to abide the current condition fundamentally ignore the challenges imposed by a broken model. Changing lexicon is a pivot. Pivots sound pretty. Pivots sound agile. After pivoting, however, you may be facing in a different direction but you’re still standing in the same place.

The forces of change that propel the world forward are not going away. If we don’t change our model to one that is more sustainable, then we risk going away. This is a moment when our biggest barrier to engaging emerging audiences is holding dear to our increasingly irrelevant plans and practices. We need a reset. And it’s up to all of us to put our heads together and make it happen.

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If your organization doesn’t have at least one millennial on its Board of Directors, then you may be setting your organization up for a difficult future.

I cannot help but notice that the Boards of Directors of many large nonprofits are missing representatives from a critical current constituency – millennials. Strangely, this seems to especially be the case within large nonprofits (annual operating budgets >$30 million, or attendance >1 million for visitor-serving organizations)… And that’s particularly terrifying, as many smaller organizations often look to larger ones for cues to the future.

Missing millennial representatives on the board doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t loads of important conversations taking place about how to better engage millennials. It seems that many organizations are stuck in the mud of dialogue instead of finding traction in actually doing something constructive to meet this opportunity where it counts most. I’ve found that it’s not uncommon at many board meetings for there to be numerous Baby Boomers – and a few members of Generation X – waxing poetic about the urgent need to “engage millennials”…without any input from actual millennials.

The fact remains: The millennials aren’t coming. They’re here now. The time has come for organizations to sink or swim based on how effectively they engage millennials…which may be particularly hard to do when nobody tasked to govern leading organizations is actually a member of this generation.

To be fair, there are some organizations that are moving forward and integrating millennials into their boards and strategic decision-making processes. I’m a millennial serving on the Board of Directors at the National Aquarium during an incredibly important time for the organization’s future. I’m grateful for this opportunity…but I also know that I’m one of relatively few millennials on the board of a larger nonprofit or a museum.

Don’t have at least one millennial on your Board of Directors yet? Here are six, critical reasons to call up the nominating committee and work on getting some impressive millennials aboard your nonprofit Board right now.

1) Millennials represent the largest generation in human history

…So not having at least one of them on your board may be a bit out of touch. Until Generation Y came along, baby boomers represented the largest generational cohort in the United States. However, at nearly 90 million strong, millennials have baby boomers outnumbered by an estimated 20 million people. As boomers age, the divide will continue to grow. This statistic alone should be more than enough to make executive leaders pause to consider the future of their organizations. Moreover, millennials will begin to tip the scales in buying power in the United States next year, and our economy will be feeling the impact by 2017.

2) Millennials will have primary influence on culture and society for an unprecedented duration

…So not having one on your board is delaying an inevitable future and holding back progress. I’ve written about this fact more directly before, but here’s a reminder: Millennials who have children are not having as many of them as their baby boomer parents. Moreover, Gen X (which is only roughly half the size of Gen Y) is simply too small in number to give birth to a future, large generation. Simply put, America’s birth-over-death rate is not increasing at the historic rates established by Baby Boomers. This means that millennials will remain the largest generational demographic in the United States for a much longer period of time than did the Baby Boomers – or any prior generation to date.

3) Millennials will significantly influence the outcomes of the next six presidential elections

…And if your organization does not get millennials involved in understanding policy-related challenges and opportunities from a leadership buy-in standpoint, you may be “voting” against your own best interests. Indeed, this depends upon millennials actually voting, but building any aspect of your organization’s survival strategy upon 90 million people not turning up for elections is a stupid strategy. Moreover, millennials will eventually dominate a very, very vast majority of all government leadership positions…mandatory government retirement policies dictate this math. Inviting millennials onto your board helps ensure that your organization’s best interests are best protected.

5) What your organization actually DOES is more important than ever before

…And aiming to be seen as an organization welcoming millennials without actually welcoming millennials where it counts may actually be detrimental to your bottom lines. We live in a world now where everybody (not just millennials) increasingly look to real-time platforms to make decisions. People want to assess an organization’s promise, reliability, trustworthiness, and impact on their own – guided largely by perceived transparency. If your organization is actively trying to engage millennials, then it’s doing something smart (for the reasons mentioned above), but if it’s doing it without also empowering millennials where it counts (in the Board Room and the future of your social mission), then the story is incongruent. Thanks in large part to the web, we live in a “show vs. tell” world – and if what you say doesn’t match what you do, people are likely to notice.

6) Millennial board members can help connect your organization directly to millennial donors

…Because millennial board members can be every bit as valuable as other board members. Despite a strange want to promulgate the concept that millennials never do and never will actively contribute to nonprofit organizations, data suggests that most millennials actually do contribute. Yes, millennials donors exist and your organization is probably messing a lot of things up trying to engage with them even if you think you’re doing it right. (Here are six sad truths that I have learned as a millennial donor.) But the good things about adding other, more diverse members to your board are still true for millennials: insight, connectivity to the right people, an “in” with a valuable group of up-and-comers, and fresh perspectives.

With all of these reasons why it is absolutely critical to add quality millennials to your nonprofit’s board of directors, it makes me wonder why I don’t have many friends on the boards of larger nonprofits at all? It begs the question, “What are current board members of nonprofits so afraid of?” Change? Shifting tides? Loss of power? Diminished relevance?

Generational change and progress are inevitable – and they are horrible reasons to cripple the evolution of mission-driven organizations. The new first imperative of power should be not to retain it but, instead, to share it. That is the stuff of a true and worthy organizational legacy.

Conducting contests that none of your online audiences are interested in, spending copious time on the newest social media features (that none of your audiences are using), measuring success by vanity metrics, and building out features that nobody is asking for…why do organizations do these things? They don’t help support bottom lines like getting folks in the door, building affinity, increasing donor support, or sharing knowledge if they aren’t relevant to your market or strategically integrated into an engagement plan…. and yet organizations brag about these useless endeavors to their boards and at industry conferences.

Many organizations seem to be feeling so “peer pressured” to be utilizing social media that they are using it to do stupid, time-consuming things for audiences that don’t matter (often, so that they may secure “innovation” points within the industry. Many museums, in particular, are guilty of this one). Your audience that does matter, however, is often left thinking something like this.

Doing social media for social media’s sake is like being expert at hammering a hammer but not knowing how to use it to build a house. You purposefully become expert at using the tool…but you forget that the whole reason that you have the tool is to actually build something. Hammers (social media) can help us build bigger and stronger houses (organizations) if we do something more than bang the floors with them.

Here’s why the rampant bad practice of using social media for social media’s sake is (at best) a distraction and, more likely, a stupid and capricious waste of time, talent, and resources:

1) It does not accomplish anything

Several questions should be considered before carrying out a digital initiative (or any initiative, for that matter). Some of those questions may be:

Who will this initiative serve/who do we want it to serve?

What do we want this audience to do in the near and long-terms?

How does this initiative help us achieve our stated goals?

“So what?” Or rather, what is the reason why this audience would be interested in this initiative? How is it relevant to them?

What need does this initiative help serve?

How will we capitalize on gains from this initiative with this audience (i.e. what will be the next step in the engagement process for them)?

Does this initiative have value to our desired audience?

Only after contemplating these questions can one determine if an initiative is worth the required effort. If your organization has trouble answering any of these questions – or if the answers are too broad or inconclusive (e.g. “targeting all social media audiences” rather than a subset), consider altering the initiative so that it meets a strategic engagement need or opportunity. Know exactly who you are talking to with the initiative, why it is helpful/relevant to them, what you want them to do, and how you’ll keep them engaged. Most stupid initiatives have only resolved one or two of these things.

2) Providing the opportunity to participate does not mean that people will participate

The “If you build it…” mentality is categorically false. Just because you launch an initiative does not mean that people will take part in it. I don’t know why some organizations still overlook this fact. If you’re asking people to take an action that just has too high of a barrier/requires too much effort or doesn’t fulfill a relevant want for them, then they probably won’t do it.

I’m often asked things like, “How can we get more people to participate in our photo contest? We’ve done everything!” The answer depends on what you had hoped to accomplish by launching that specific contest. If you’re targeting the audience and they aren’t biting, chances are your specific initiative is just not going to provide the value you’d hoped because, well, the market has spoken and they are saying, “Nope. Not interested in doing that thing.”

3) It wastes resources

Resources can be tight for nonprofit organizations – and time is money. You may as well dedicate your time to spinning in circles in your office instead of carrying out social media for social media’s sake. In fact, that might even be better because it may cause you less stress than having to answer the question, “So…why was that strategically beneficial for us in the long term?”

4) It makes social media buy-in harder in the long run

On that note, carrying out several initiatives that aren’t strategically integrated into an engagement plan may make executives wonder what your engagement plan even is! Carrying out social media “bells and whistles” can be like crying wolf. How can executives (let alone your audiences) know which initiatives are important and which are for vanity? These types of initiatives may be especially difficult to reconcile if you don’t even have baseline practices down like social care.

5) It misses the point of social media

I refer again to my opening analogy about how social media for social media’s sake is like becoming really good at hammering, but not knowing how to use a hammer to build a house.

If you don’t know how that new, “cool” thing that you are doing on social media supports and enhances your organization’s bottom lines, then it’s probably a waste of time, money, and energy. Utilizing social media to strategically engage audiences is not only a good move – it’s increasingly critical.

Lest the signal be lost amidst the noise: The important word in the preceding sentence was “strategically” – not “social media.”

“Picking someone’s brain” needs an update. Here’s how to actually get an “informational interview” in today’s world.

For years it seems that career counselors have praised one, simple trick above all others as the best way to break into an industry: Conducting “informational interviews” with industry leaders. This advice makes perfect sense: The job-seeker gets face-time with someone in a leadership position, the leader makes a time investment in you (which may make them more psychologically inclined to want to help you land a job), and, of course, one stands to gain first-hand information about their hopeful industry. There are a lot of theoretical wins here!

Except there’s just one obstacle – actually getting the time investment required of that informational interview.

As a person who produces content online and has a public email address for communications, I get LOTS of requests to “pick my brain.” While I am flattered and grateful that I may be considered a valuable connection (I hope!), I don’t flatter myself enough to overlook how easy I am to contact after a simple Google search. The fact is, although I genuinely want to help, I cannot possibly respond to each of requests that I receive…or I would no longer have a job to talk about!

The concept of the “informational interview” needs an update (or at least a refresher) for the Information Age. In the past, when it was a tad more difficult to find information about professionals, just getting contact details could be the symbolic “in” that demonstrated a bit of effort and ingenuity. That’s not the case anymore. Contacting professionals is much easier for those seeking aid and, consequently, managing time and weeding through requests may be harder for professionals due to the increased volume.

I’ve compiled some of my own thoughts and have also been asking around to other professionals for better practices when it comes to scoring a helpful connection, and several “If they only knew…” themes have emerged from these conversations. Here are seven things to do if you want to land an informational interview:

(Spoiler alert: The web doesn’t remove the need for you to put in some effort.)

1) Know that you aren’t the only one asking for attention

This has probably always been true of informational interviews. However, please don’t forget how easy email addresses and contact information are to come by in today’s world…or you may risk underestimating the volume of requests that your interview target receives. This is especially relevant if you are reaching out to someone with a public email address, as the effort required to contact these people is very low (which can make their inboxes much more crowded and your aim to differentiate yourself and score some time much harder).

2) Show (don’t merely tell) your shared passion

When someone is getting multiple requests for their time from all sorts of individuals, it is difficult to distinguish those persons truly interested in making a meaningful connection from others thinking, “Well, why don’t I just shoot this-person-whose-job-sounds-cool an email?”

A way to rise above this – especially if you are contacting someone who is particularly active on social media – is to foster a virtual relationship with the potential interviewee before contacting them to ask for their time or input. Comment on their posts, tweet your thoughts with them, leave messages or post interesting/relevant content on their Facebook page (if it’s public). If you’re showing that you’re a member of their community and have similar interests, then you’ll have a much easier time telling them that you do when you reach out to ask for time – and chances are they may already have an idea of who you are. (Pro-tip: Don’t go crazy here. Just a few comments or interactions can go a long way.)

3) Having someONE in common is (still) often more meaningful than having someTHING in common

Having a shared interest or experience isn’t generally unique and – while it may be a conversation starter – it may not provide the catalyst for turning an communication into a meeting or detailed response. For instance, having the same graduate degree may not be enough to differentiate you among a sea of similarly credentialed recent graduates.

Having someone in common, however, may well do the trick – especially if your common connection to that individual reaches out on your behalf to the interviewee. Connections to people make the world turn – online and offline. This is the entire premise of LinkedIn for good reason.

The vast majority of the “informational interviews” that I accept are at the request of someone that I already know. After talking with several professionals, I learned quickly that this is often the case for them as well. Keep in mind that though we live in a world where it is relatively easy to find shared passions or experiences (i.e. a same degree or university) thanks to the web, knowing folks (and getting to know folks) still makes the world turn.

4) Offer something in return (by being interesting)

I don’t mean buy coffee…I mean, yes, offer to buy the coffee as a gesture, but know that the person with whom you hope to meet likely values their time exponentially more than a free cup of coffee. What I mean by “offer something in return” is “be interesting.” It’s much easier to invest one’s time to help someone else if the beneficiary of this investment is able to contribute something valuable to the conversation. Let the potential interviewee see how meeting with you might also be useful to them.

The world is turning at an exciting pace and smart leaders seem to understand this. Even if you are comparatively inexperienced and trying to break into an industry, there’s usually an interesting perspective that you can bring to the table.

5) Know exactly what you are hoping to learn and make sure that the interviewee can actually help

Keep in mind the expertise of the person with whom you’re meeting. By this, I don’t simply mean “make sure you’re discussing the same industry,” but, rather, make sure that you’re not actually seeking the advice of a different type of person – like a professional career coach. Sharing your story may be alright, but be careful not to put your interviewee in a situation in which they may not feel comfortable providing you with advice. If it is clear in your pitch that your “questions about the industry” are actually “deeply personal inquiries about your potential life path,” you may not get a response.

The web makes available sufficient information that – with just a mere moment of research – you can learn enough about your interviewee to focus your conversation…and also find someone else to talk to (like a friend or career counselor) if they better fit your needs.

An okay question for an informational interview: What graduate degrees, if any, do you think provide an advantage in the industry?

A not-okay question for an informational interview: These are my general interests. What graduate degree should I get?

6) Know when you should actually be paying someone directly for their time

Ah, the cardinal sin of “brain picking!” I’m hearing of more and more thought leaders charging “coffee fees” because of this kind of “brain picking” abuse.

When you hop on the phone with someone under the premise of an “informational interview” and, instead, steer the conversation into the specifics of your (or your company’s) individual circumstances, you may be asking for free services. This is a big no-no! At best, it is disrespectful.

Presumably, you wouldn’t seek an “informational interview” with a CPA…and then proceed to ask their assistance with your tax return. Nor would you seek a similar session with an architect…and then ask them to redline your house plans. Yet, for some reason, many people seem perfectly OK with the notion of seeking free counsel on matters pertaining to business operations, marketing, and communications.

In general, you should expect to pay for expertise and talent. Be honest with yourself before reaching out: If what you are seeking is specific expertise that is unique to your situation, then you probably don’t want to interview that expert. You probably want to hire them.

7) Time is money (and ease of communications do not change that)

We all need to be judicious with our time. Time – both yours and that of the interviewee – is a precious resource, and ought to be valued as such. When you request an informational interview (or even a thoughtful email response), you are actually asking for an investment. That email that you casually send to request an informational interview is actually a sales pitch for an investment in you and your future. I think if folks thought about this a bit harder, the emails they send may be quite different.

I work with nonprofit leaders to ensure the long-term relevance and financial success of their visitor-serving organizations. I specialize in the evolution and deployment of innovative community engagement practices informed by proprietary data that both identify and predict trends in the market’s behavior.

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